On the eve before what no doubt will be a significant election for Americans, I think it would be appropriate to think once more about the binding nature of the fundamental principles of Catholic social teaching and their immediate implications for political and economic realities. Pope Benedict XVI’s most recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, would make for good meditation before heading out to vote tomorrow.

We often hear this notion of “prudential judgment” tossed around haphazardly, usually by those who search for an excuse to disregard some principle or implication of Catholic social doctrine. While very specific, concrete policy decisions like setting speed limits or requiring possession of specific resident documentation (e.g., state ID cards) are, indeed, underdetermined by Catholic social doctrine and are, therefore, up to prudential judgment, the bulk of what the Church teaches in social matters is binding on the faithful. But why should I, as a Catholic, care about what Pope Benedict XVI or, for that matter, what any pope or council has to say about political ideologies, human development, distributive justice, and economic life? The simple answer is, if you accept the doctrinal authority of the Church, then it follows that you will accept Catholic social teaching, for to reject a substantive part of the latter is to reject the former. The history of papal social teaching certainly confirms this.

In his 1912 encyclical, Singulari Quadam, Pope St. Pius X declared that the Church’s teaching authority extends beyond the exclusive domain of faith and into the domain of socio-economic affairs:

Last week in a post here, I quoted Jay Cost of the Weekly Standard as follows:

Allocating the undecided voters proportionally, Bruce Banner gets a two-party vote of 54.5 to 45.5. That’s a nine-point GOP win, in line with a prediction of a historically high Republican caucus, say 240 seats (which is what I actually did predict last week).

Incredible Hulk. The Hulk has problems with this analysis. It tosses out what has historically been the best estimator of midterm congressional results, the Gallup generic ballot likely model. This year Gallup is calling it the “traditional” model, but in every midterm before this, it was the only likely voter model.

Only once in 60 years has the Gallup generic ballot underestimated Democratic strength by a significant amount – by 2% in 2006. On average, it slightly overestimates the Democrats, by 0.7%.

Here is what he is seeing this morning based upon Gallup showing a 15 point GOP likely voter advantage:

My internal conflict between “Bruce Banner,” who predicts a 1994-style scenario, and “The Incredible Hulk,” who thinks 2010 will be as Republican as anything since the 1920s, has been resolved.

Assuming the polls are correct, obviously a big assumption, the Democrats are in for a very long election night tomorrow. In the face of devastating election losses, the Dems can rely upon Veep and beloved national clown Joe Biden! First, we should understand why the Democrats are looking at the electoral equivalent of a wheat farm in Death Valley. My favorite living historian Victor Davis Hanson explains what went wrong:

Barack Obama entered office; nationalized health care; ran up record $1 trillion deficits; promised to hike taxes on the rich; pushed cap and trade through the House; took over large chunks of banks, insurance companies, and auto corporations; made hard-left appointments from Van Jones to Sonia Sotomayor — and in 21 months saw his positives crash from near 70% in January 2009 to little above 40%, with the specter of near record Democratic losses in the Congress just two years after the anti-Bush/anti-Iraq sweep of 2008.

All the polls of independents and moderates show radical shifts and express unhappiness with higher taxes, larger deficits, a poor economy, and too much government. In other words, the electorate is not angry that Obama has moved too far to the right or stayed in the center or borrowed too little money. A Barney Frank or Dennis Kucinich is looking at an unusually tight race in a very liberal district not because liberals have had it with them, but because large numbers of moderates and independents most surely have.

Yet if one were to read mainstream Democratic analysis, there is almost no acknowledgment that the party has become far too liberal. Indeed, they fault Obama for not being liberal enough, or, in the case of the Paul Krugman school, for not borrowing another trillion dollars for even more stimulus, despite the failure of the earlier borrowing. In fact, Obamaites offer three unhinged exegeses for the looming defeat: a) there is no looming defeat: the Democrats will still keep the House; or b) Obama did not prove to be the radical as promised; or c) the American people are clueless and can’t follow science and logic and therefore do not know what is good for them.

Do liberals really believe that had they rammed down cap and trade, borrowed $6 trillion instead of $3 trillion the last 21 months, and obtained blanket amnesty their candidates would be posed to ward off Republican attacks this election year? The problem right now with Greece is that it borrows too little, hires too few, and spends not enough? Read the rest of this entry »

Gallup has released its final pre-election generic congressional ballot poll. It shows the Republicans with an unprecedented 15 point lead among likely voters over the Democrats. Read the rest of this entry »

Reason TV reminds us that there is nothing new in regard to negative politics. The most vitriolic election in US history was probably, as the above video indicates, the election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

The above video is for my co-blogger Paul, not the biggest fan, to put it mildly, of the Third President of the United States. Jefferson and Adams were accused of every vice imaginable except, perhaps, of cannibalism. If television had been available in 1800 the attack ads would have been sulphurous. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of Republicans are going to be elected on Tuesday precisely because the Democrats have no clue in regard to restraining government spending. If the Republicans do not wish to find themselves in the same boat two years hence, they must embrace the hardnosed attitude of Chris Christie in taking an axe to spending. Republican elected officials, look at what Chris Christie is doing in New Jersey, and go thou and do likewise.

Something for the weekend. Chester by William Billings. During the American Revolution, this was the unofficial national anthem for the new United States. As we participate in elections it is good to recall the struggles throughout our history that bequeathed to us the freedoms we enjoy today. We stand on the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and we should never forget that. Read the rest of this entry »